An Ashburton mayoral candidate has clapped back at his opponent’s election promises: “Live in the real world, not the fantasy one”.
Russell Ellis was responding to promises made by his mayoral rival Jeff Ryan at the meet the candidate’s event in Ashburton last night.
A crowd of around 150 prospective voters turned up to hear from the four mayoral candidates and eight of the nine Ashburton ward candidates, with Leonard Cojocaru unable to attend.
Ryan said the solution to balancing rate rises and community expectations is to “create more money”.
“We need to look at council like a business and make income ourselves and not rely on the ratepayers.”
He is campaigning on getting the Government to return all road user charges paid in the district to remain in the district
“RUC for roads, not rates for roads,” he said.
He also wants to extract more shingle from the Ashburton River and sell it to fund other operations.
Ryan’s other scheme is a new canal to help the Lake Hood water quality and to provide a punting tourism business.
Ellis was next up to the podium and provided a rebuttal.
“With all due respect to Mr Ryan, we need to live in the real world, not the fantasy one.”
“We are not going to get money from the Government for RUC, we are not going to get money from ECan from shingle. We have to do this ourselves.”
He said 5% could come off the rates tomorrow “if we spent less on the roads”.
“If you want to save money and keep those core services, somewhere along the line we have to reduce some level of service.”
Both Ellis and Ryan are vying for the mayoralty and a seat in the Ashburton ward, with Liz McMillan and Rob Mackle also seeking the mayoralty.
McMillan responded about balancing core services without reducing services before losing her train of thought mid-answer, concluding with a suggestion to seek collaborative opportunities to “keep that level of service up, while not putting the rates up”.
She had also said the focus on core services, which are being dictated by the Government, needed to be on roads, infrastructure, and the three waters delivery.
Around balancing rate rises and community expectation, Mackle simply stated, “we are all getting serviced pretty well”.
He earlier noted “rates are only going one way and that’s up”.
“All we can do now is try and keep things down so it’s affordable.
“We need to put a clamp on the want-to-haves, and another option to look at is selling off investments showing a poor return to pay down debt.”
Later in the meeting, former councillor Dianne Rawlinson directed a question to Ryan, as the newcomer from outside council, to explain his knowledge and experience of local government.
“There are different rules and regulations to comply with,” Ryan said.
He pointed at the RMA reform, the Local Government Act provides “the set boundary” for councils, and the various other acts, codes to abide by.
Ryan said the question was “an onion…as there is so much I could answer”, but he only had 60 seconds.
He claimed to have “good contacts in government” and that he had worked for former National MPs.
The other question topics included how to foster business in the CBD, if candidates supported the extension of the EA Networks Centre stadium, returning an information centre in Ashburton, and the upcoming RDR consent renewal.
The final question of the night made things awkward when the district council candidates were asked if they felt there was still a need for a regional council – with two of the regional council candidates, John Sunckell and Peter Trolove – in the room waiting to introduce themselves at the end.
